Labour And Conservative Party Consensus

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To what extent is there a consensus between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party? Taxation Traditionally, it would appear that adversarial politics occurred between the Labour Party and Conservative Party in terms of taxation. Traditional Conservatives believed in low taxation, as they agreed with the notion that low taxation was an incentive to make people work harder. In contrast, Labour believed in higher rates of tax for those who earned higher wages, as this would achieve the redistribution of wealth and pursued Labour’s desire of economic equality. More recently however, it can be seen that there has been slightly more consensus between the two parties in terms of taxation. In 2008, Gordon Brown introduced the 50p rate of tax on high earners, which helped to achieve redistribution of wealth in society. Cameron has decided to retain the 50p tax rate in the current government (despite the fact that he would like to abolish the 50p tax rate), as the current government does not believe that they would be able to afford tax cuts at this current time. This therefore shows that there has been an increase in consensus between the two parties with taxation policies. Furthermore, Brown also cut corporation tax by 2% in 2008. George Osborne would like to further cut corporation tax from 28% to 24%. This shows that the desire to cut corporation tax is in fact shared by both the Conservative Party and Labour Party, thus showing some consensus between the two parties in terms of taxation. A case that shows that there is not total consensus between the two parties with tax is the VAT rate. When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, he raised the VAT rate to 17.5%. Cameron has further raised the tax rate from that to 20%. This would show consensus between the two parties. However, Ed Miliband is against the rises in VAT, as it penalises the poor and less well-off,
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